Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodovar
Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer and former actor. He came to prominence as a director and screenwriter during La Movida Madrileña, a cultural renaissance that followed the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. His first few films characterised the sense of sexual and political freedom of the period. In 1986, he established his own film production company, El Deseo, with his younger brother Agustín Almodóvar, responsible for producing all of his films since Law of...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth25 September 1949
CountrySpain
I think my films are always political, even if I don't put explicitly political things in them.
My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.
La Mancha is a very macho, chauvinistic society. I saw very clearly that my life had to be in Madrid, and I liberated myself from my mum and dad after high school.
My first memory is of the eyes of my brother; he was looking at me all the time.
I ask myself questions that journalists don't dare to ask or don't know how to ask.
Cinema has become my life. I don't mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.
I think it's a change that I did not intend at the time but it is clear that, from The Flower of My Secret on, there is a change in my films. A lot of the journalists have very generously attributed this to my growing maturity.
I am partly not conscious of structure with my movies but this is when I am writing. I leave my mind very free and then I correct it after.
The life I live due to my work is difficult to share.
If I'd lived like my characters, I would have been dead before I'd made 16 films.
If I make a movie in English, the money will come from Europe, so that I can keep my independence and freedom. The way they produce in Hollywood doesn't fit me.
Both sex and death are eternal themes. You could make thousands of movies on this theme, and whether you have a human being who is painting, singing, making a film, writing, these are the themes that you will come back to and return to. If you don't have any of these artistic expressions, sex is one of the only gifts that nature gave you for free, so it is very important to celebrate it. And then, with death, we are condemned to that. This is absolutely present in our lives.
I'm a very dull passenger. I don't speak. I don't have sex. No alcohol. I don't do drugs. The thing that I like about flying is that I feel like I can really concentrate. I used to write many things, and many ideas for my movies belong to this moment where I'm not anywhere specifically in terms of time and space and geography. I am suspended, and this suspension fits me very well.
A dead love never dies.